The Simpsons Showrunner Talks New Plusaversary Short and What Disney Wouldn’t Let Them Do

The Walt Disney Company’s acquisition of Fox brought with it a number of exciting opportunities, which included the iconic The Simpsons series being incorporated into the streaming service Disney+. Additionally, while the sitcom has been able to lampoon and satirize all corners of pop culture over the course of more than 30 years, Disney has a number of beloved properties that The Simpsons has been able to embrace more fully, even seeing stars from the Star Wars and Marvel universes joining the fray for exclusive shorts. The latest The Simpsons short, “The Simpsons in Plusaversary,” debuts on Disney+ on November 12th to celebrate the second anniversary of the streamer’s launch.

In the short, The Simpsons host a Disney+ Day party and everyone is on the list… except Homer. With friends from across the service and music fit for a Disney princess, Plusaversary is Springfield’s event of the year.

ComicBook.com caught up with The Simpsons showrunner Al Jean to talk developing the new short, what Disney asked the short not to do, and what the future might hold for the beloved animated series.

ComicBook.com: Al, thanks for taking the time to chat today.

Al Jean: Well, I’m honored to talk to ComicBook.com. My entry into the Disney+ world was Marvel Comics of the ’60s. The fact that we’re putting Doctor Strange in a cameo in this just blows my mind.

As a comic book fan, as some might say, a nerd yourself, you’ve gotten to do the Loki short and the Star Wars short, so how did this particular short come together? What was your reaction to hearing about the opportunity?

Well, my goal was to take all the beloved characters of my childhood and put them in a filthy bar, and we did accomplish that. One of the writers, Loni Sosthand, suggested that Homer buddy up with Goofy, which I think is a great pairing. They’re pretty similar guys. We just wanted [the characters] to act like they worked for Disney+ and they’re not all that happy, but I am.

Having a character like Goofy in a bar, drinking at Moe’s, that seems like an interesting thing to have Disney sign-off on. You would think there would be very specific things that you were told, “You can do this, but not that,” so were there any things where Disney said, “We want you to feel creative, but please avoid doing this,”?

There was one thing, which I totally agreed with anyways, they didn’t want someone who was like a role model for kids to be drinking, like a Disney princess, most of which are under 21 anyways. I didn’t argue at all with that. The other rule is don’t show Mickey, which we much prefer having Bart play Mickey, and say things like, “Party’s over, get back to work.” So I’m happy with that, too.

I haven’t noticed, for the proper The Simpsons series, and it’s now been a couple of years that the series has been under the Disney umbrella, but have there been any changes with Disney’s ownership to the series, from your perspective, or has it only afforded opportunities?

It’s afforded these opportunities, if you’re worried about the show going “G-rated,” I would point you to this past Sunday’s episode and next Sunday’s, which is a parody of the Fargo series on FX, and these shorts are just wonderful opportunities for us to do three-minute stories, which I love, which we’d been doing before with Maggie. I was saying to David Silverman, who directs them, we’ve done more shorts in one year since Buster Keaton, so it’s pretty cool.

For this specific short, it’s so fun to see — obviously, Gaston drinking at Moe’s makes perfect sense. When it came to developing the roster of the characters that would appear, what was that process like of selecting the precise cameos that you would have?

There was a little hidden joke [about the guest list], with Gaston and even Aaron Burr, because Hamilton‘s on Disney+, were on the guest list, but not Homer. So where does he rank? If he’s below them?

As far as deciding the characters, who was the figure you were most excited to Simpson-ize and see the Simpsons look of that character?

There’s a little visual joke with Sebastian the crab drinking that David Silverman put in. I personally loved having Dan Castellaneta play Donald Duck, it was really funny. Hank Azaria was Goofy, Nancy Cartwright was Mickey, and Tress MacNeille was a perfect … Maleficent. She played Maleficent and it was dead-perfect.

Now I’m wishing there was a scene with Sebastian drinking crab juice.

That’s kinda cannibalism, I think.

Speaking to the future of the series, could you see, since these shorts are Simpsons adjacent, is there a Simpsons character that could get their own spinoff?

Anything is possible. There was a discussion a long while ago about doing a spin-off series of Simpsons background characters, but [James L. Brooks] felt at the time that he wanted to concentrate on the main show, which has paid off in 33+ seasons, but I’ll just say there’s no animated property like The Simpsons that hasn’t gone on in various forms forever.

Was it something like “22 Short Films About Springfield” and just following those characters?

That was what led to the discussion. Matt Groening wanted to do a series like that, but it didn’t go through. 

I’m sure you and the writers and producers, like you say, 33 years this show has been on, I could see it going for another 33 years. Are there any discussions of, “Well, 40 is a nice, round number, let’s aim for 40 seasons and call it quits then,”?

It’s never been about the round number. Every pickup is a two-year pickup, because it’s really hard for animation to do pickups yearly, so we’re going through Season 34, I wouldn’t be surprised in the least if we went through Season 36, so then 38. There’s a number of factors that’ll impact the decision, but so far, it’s all systems go.

One of the things fans love talking about with The Simpsons is how you make all these outlandish jokes over the course of 33 years and some of them end up coming true, these Simpsons predictions. Has there been one that even you thought, “Holy cow, how did that one-off joke that we made, how did that end up becoming a reality?”

There was one crazy cell where Bart held up a brochure that is “New York on $9 a day,” the World Trade Center, this was 1996, was in the background, so it looked like a 9/11, that was insane, and, of course, unplanned and a terrible coincidence. That’s the one where I go, “What was that? That was bizarre.” Most of the other things are educated guesses. Donald Trump was running for president and we predicted Lady Gaga’s halftime show by looking at her earlier costumes, so that was not that hard.

If there was another Disney property that reached out to you and asked you to develop a project, a Marvel animated series or something, is there something that’s not Simpsons-related at all that you’d want to dive into?

Well, first, I’d like to hire you as my agent, and secondly, I love working on The Simpsons and I love Marvel, Star Wars, that’s what I grew up with. It was such a thrill to work on [the Loki short], so that’s my answer. Of course, my answer would be I’d love to hear about it.

I really appreciate you taking the time, I’ll shoot a text to the folks at Disney to grease the wheels a little bit.

Well, I have a resume coming out in two days on Disney+, so I hope they like the “Plusaversy” short and they celebrate the holiday with the appropriate reverence and holiness that I do.

I think it’s a Federal holiday now.

It definitely will be.

I hear that, now that they’ve done Fox, the next acquisition that Disney is making is the American government.

Don’t forget, the appropriate gift for a Plusaversary, is an NFT.

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“The Simpsons in Plusaversary” premieres on Disney+ on November 12th.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity. You can contact Patrick Cavanaugh directly on Twitter.